Home Is Nowhere You Can Find
by Secret Staircase
Summary: Sometimes Mayu thinks they've always been at the festival.


**Written for the Beyond the Camera's Lens Christmas Exchange. The recipient's favourite characters are Mayu and Sae, and I got to wondering what happened to Sae in the Shadow Festival ending.**

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><p>Sometimes Mayu thinks they've always been at the festival. She has always been here, hearing the drumming begin in the distance, letting Mio pull her through the crowd. This is all they've ever known, and everything else is a dream. Mio always gasps at the sight of the shrine path, lit with lanterns; she always turns and says, "I never want to go home!" Mayu thinks, sometimes, they never will.<p>

She hasn't told Mio about this idea, but that in itself troubles her. They can't have secrets from each other. They never have before. So she tries to ignore the feeling – not that they've done this before, but that it's always the first time, a thousand first times layered atop each other, always new, always the same. She tries to lose herself in the sense of anticipation fizzing through the crowd.

A voice speaks close in her ear. She can't make out the words, and when she swings around, nobody's nearby. Nobody but Mio, who has stopped to look at a display of masks for sale.

"I think I have a little money left," she says. "Shall I buy you one?"

Mayu looks at the masks, too, and her skin goes tight with dread when she sees movement behind the eye holes. A moment later she realises the stand is just a wire scaffold, and you can see the people walking past on the other side, but she can't shake off the impression she felt, in that instant, that the masks were looking at her, with knowing slyness and infinite malice. It reminds her of something.

A gust of wind briefly dims the lanterns and stirs the red hanging banners. Mayu can see its progress up the shrine path towards her, like a flying shadow. That's when she looks around for Mio, and realises she's alone.

She turns again, searching the crowd. None of the people pay any attention to Mayu as they pass, but it's odd, the sudden silence descending. Nobody is talking to one other, nobody is smiling. They trudge along with no expression, and in the red-toned lantern-light, she notices their gaunt faces, their ragged clothes. She can't hear the drums any more. The only music is a sad, slow funeral song from far away, and Mayu has heard it before.

The eyes of the fox masks follow her as she runs in the direction where she last saw Mio, and the people around her are just moving shadows. She's alone in a procession of the dead, and she'll never find her sister. Her heart grows cold and heavy at the thought, the certainty of it, the certainty of her future alone.

"Mio!" she screams, and one of the figures ahead pauses and turns back. Mio's yukata has grown darker, the colour like old blood, the bright flowers drowned, but Mayu knows if she can just get to her and take hold of her outstretched hand, this darkened world will fall away, and everything will be all right.

That's when the voice speaks in her ear again, so close it sends a thrill down her neck. She can't understand the words, but she knows the voice, she knows it well.

The banners flap in a strong, dark wind. The flames all flicker, and the moving light beats like wings inside the paper lantern-shades. Mayu turns, and Sae is standing beside her.

She opens her eyes. Candle flames sway dreamily in the darkness. The air is cold, and the only warm, sure thing is the feeling of Mio's hands holding hers tightly.

She closes her eyes, and the festival lights shimmer before her. Mio says, "I never want to go home!" She opens her eyes, and the sacrificial altar is still there, like the memory of a nightmare. But now she understands. This is real, and the festival was the dream all along. She can go back there, but there's something she needs to do first.

Mio doesn't stir when Mayu disentangles their joined hands. She imagines Mio at the festival, looking for her, calling her name, and though the thought brings tears to her eyes, something inside her curls with gladness as well.

She pulls herself up from the floor, drawing breath at the fierce ache in her knee when she tries to stand. She almost forgot about her leg. For the first few steps she can manage only a lopsided lurch, but after that the pain and stiffness ease a little, and she feels equal to the stairs.

Before long the candlelight is lost behind her, and she feels her way along in absolute darkness. At last she feels the space open out around her, and hears the whispering echoes race away .

The braziers at the Abyss have all gone out. There is a little light, ashen as the last dying gleam of a December evening, and she can see Sae, sitting on the ground.

_That's where I was sitting when Mio came for me,_ Mayu thinks, and as if she heard the thought, Sae stirs.

"I tried to follow you," she says. "But it was your dream, not mine."

_It's the Malice,_ Mayu thinks. _You could have come on your own, but not with that._ She says nothing.

"Where is she?" Sae grieves, her head bowed. "I felt Yae come back. She was here. I know she was. But she left. Where did she go?"

"I don't know," Mayu says, but she thinks she understands. It's the Malice, again. There was no ritual to cleanse it. Mayu and her sister sank into a dream of their own making, and when only the darkness was left, Yae's spirit fled. Sae remained behind, waiting in the dark, alone.

Mayu lowers herself to the ground, stretching out her bad leg gingerly. She remembers that feeling, that cold. It's the same thing she felt in the dream of the festival, and she felt it when she and Sae were one, watching the Darkness seething just below the brink of the Abyss.

"The door is still open," Mayu says.

Sae doesn't lift her head, or move at all.

"The door in Kureha Shrine," Mayu says. "The door out of the village. What if you could leave, and go looking for her?"

"Nobody can leave."

"The door was never open before." Mayu knows she's grasping at straws – the door might not even still be open, and even if it is, she's not sure Sae would be able to leave while her heart is still in the Abyss – but the sympathy between them runs too deep not to suggest it.

Sae shakes her head, once, slowly. "If I wait here, she'll come for me. If I wait, there might be more twins like you. If I leave, we might never know how to find each other."

"But – "

Sae does look at her then, her eyes full of the Darkness. "I could have gone with her, but I can't do it alone. Could you?"

And for that Mayu has no answer, because she knows she couldn't.

"That's all I wanted to ask you." Sae turns away, dismissing her. "Go back."

Mayu wants to reach out to her somehow, embrace her, comfort her, but the coldness of Sae's voice won't allow it. "I'm s– "

"Go back."

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><p>The air is alive with laughter and voices, and savoury with the aroma of fried food wafting from the stalls. Under that, Mayu can smell the deep green perfume of the forest, the warm summer night. They reach the top of the long stone stair, and find the shrine path lit with hundreds of lanterns, like a vision from another world. Mio gasps, clutching Mayu's hand in delight. "I never want to go home!"<p>

"Let's stay forever," agrees Mayu, smiling back, and although she has never been happier, she still feels a sense of foreboding when she says it, as if she's given voice to an omen. Mio doesn't notice, only tugs on her hand, laughing, and Mayu lets herself be pulled on, into the light.

Sometimes, she thinks they've always been at the festival.


End file.
